The Eagle of the Empire Part 34

She could wield a sword expertly and was an accurate shot with a firearm. She could ride with any woman in England. She had, in full, the intrepidity and courage of her ancestors. Her prowess, so strange and so unusual in that day in a woman, had been a subject of disapproval on the part of her uncle, but Sir Gervaise Yeovil and his son had viewed it with delight. Frank Yeovil had brought her from Spain a beautiful Toledo blade and a pair of Spanish dueling pistols, light, easily handled and of deadly accuracy. The blade hung from a peg in the wall by the head of her bed. The pistols lay in a case on the table upon which her lighted bedroom candle stood. They were charged and ready for use.

Throwing back the cover without a sound, presently she stepped through the hangings and out on the floor. A loose wrapper lay at the foot of the bed, which was a tall old four-poster, heavily curtained. Whoever was in the room was on the other side of the bed, near the wall. The curtains hung between.

She was as light as a bird in her movements. She drew the bed-gown nearer, thrust her feet into heelless slippers, placed convenient for her morning rising by her maid, opened the box of pistols, lifted one of them, examining it on the instant to see that it was ready for use, slipped on the wrapper, stepped toward the foot of the bed and waited.

The beat of the rain, the shriek of the wind, the roar of the thunder filled the room with sound, but the woman had good ears and they were well trained. She could hear someone softly moving. Sometimes, in lulls in the storm, she thought she could detect heavy breathing.

The natural impulse of the ordinary woman would have been to scream or if not that, having gained the floor, to rush to the door, or if not that to pull the bell cord and summon help. But Laure d'Aumenier was not an ordinary woman. She knew that any sound would bring aid and rescue at once. There would be plenty of time to scream, to pull the bell or to do whatever was necessary later. And something, she could not tell what, something she could not recognize, impelled her to take the course she did; to wait, armed.

But the wait began to tell on her sensibilities. The sound of somebody or something moving mysteriously to-and-fro behind the curtains over against the wall at the other end of the room began to work on her nerves. It takes an iron steadiness, a pa.s.sive capacity for endurance which is quite different from woman's more or less emotional courage, to wait under circ.u.mstances like that.

Just when she had reached the limit of her endurance and was persuaded that she could stand no more, her attention was attracted by a slight click as of a lock or catch, a movement as of something heavy, as of a drawer or door, and then the footsteps turned and came toward the window. The moment of action had arrived and with it came the return of her wavering courage.

To reach the window the intruder must pa.s.s by the foot of the bed where she stood. Now the light was on the table at the head of the bed and the table was far enough from the bed to shine past her into the room.

The moving figure suddenly came into view. It was a man, shrouded in a heavy cloak. He did not glance toward the bed. His eyes were fixed on the window. His astonishment, therefore, was overwhelming when he suddenly found himself looking into the barrel of a pistol and confronted by a woman.

CHAPTER XXII

IN THE COUNTESS LAURE'S BED-CHAMBER

That astonishment was so great when the man recognized the woman that he threw up his hands and stepped backward. As he did so his sodden cloak, which he had gathered closely around him, opened and fell. The next instant his hand tore his hat from his head and he stood revealed in the full light of the candle.

"Marteau!" exclaimed the woman in a surprise and dismay equal to that of the man she confronted.

Her arm that held the pistol dropped weakly to her side. With the other hand she drew the peignoir about her, a vivid crimson wave rushed over her whole body. To surprise a man, a thief, in her room at night, was one thing; to confront the man she loved in such a guise was another. Her heart rose in her throat. For a moment she thought she would have fainted.

"You! You!" she choked out brokenly. "Mon Dieu!"

"Mademoiselle," began the man desperately, his confusion and dismay growing with every flying moment, "I----"

"What do you here," she went on impetuously, finding voice, "in my bedroom at night? I thought you----"

"For G.o.d's sake hear me. I came to----" and then he stopped lamely and in agonized embarra.s.sment.

"For what did you come?" she insisted.

"Mademoiselle," he said, throwing his head up, "I cannot tell you. But when I was stationed here before this was the bedroom of the Commanding-Officer. I supposed it was so still. I had not the faintest idea that you--that it was----"

"And what would you do in the bedroom of the Commanding-Officer?" asked the woman, forgetting for the moment the strangeness of the situation in her anxiety to solve the problem.

"And that, I repeat, I cannot tell."

"Not even to me, who----" she stopped in turn.

"Yes, yes, go on," urged the young man, stepping nearer to her. "Not even to you who----"

"Who espoused your cause in the hall this very night, who befriended you," she went on rather lamely and inadequately having checked herself in time.

"Oh," said the young officer in great disappointment, "that?"

"Yes."

"You see, the Governor----"

"Did you wish to kill him?"

"Mademoiselle!" he protested. "I swear to you that I would not harm him for the world but I----"

"Are you in need? He offered you money. I have a few resources."

"For G.o.d's sake, mademoiselle," interposed the officer desperately, but she went resolutely on.

"Whatever I have is yours. See----" she stripped rings from her fingers and proffered them--"take them."

"Mademoiselle," said the young man sadly, "you wrong me."

"Well, if it was not for murder or for gain, for what cause did you take so frightful a risk?"

"Is there no other motive, mademoiselle, that makes men risk their lives than revenge or greed?"

"What do you mean?"

"Love."

"But you said you did not know this was my room!"

The words came from her impetuously and before she thought she realized when it was too late.

"Ah, mademoiselle, love of woman is a great pa.s.sion. I know it only too well, too sadly. But it is not the only love."

"Have you another in your heart?" asked the Countess with a sinking in her own.

"Love of honor."

"I don't understand."

"And yet I know that you are the very soul of honor yourself."

"I thank you, but----"

"Mademoiselle," said the young man, coming to a sudden resolution, "appearances are frightfully against me. That I should be here, in your room, at this hour of the night, under the circ.u.mstances, condemns me utterly in your opinion, especially as I have offered no adequate explanation. I am about to throw myself on your mercy, to trust to your honor."

"You shall not trust in vain, monsieur."

"I know that. I trusted to your honor in the Chateau d'Aumenier and you did not fail me then."